"The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with His love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zeph 3:17

"The divine assurance thundering through the ages is also a divine invitation:
"I am with you -- will you be with Me?"
This dynamic is the absolute unifying center of the Bible. Every story in the Bible, no matter its twists and turns, wheher the human characters are trustworthy or untrustworthy, whether the story is sad or happy, is built on this clarion call to relationship, "I am with you - will you be with Me?"  Richard Foster

This has me gripped into stillness.

In pondering the questions of love and loving my neighbor. In pondering how can I do this 'loving' better? I come up on this quote and it stops me from moving forward.  I have a wonder at the God who IS. I am in awe of Him. He has showed up so many times in my life - I am often reminded of the Israelites in the desert. Wandering and being stopped by the cloud until they were to wander again.  Well right now I am stopped.

I believe that it is impossible to love without knowing who it is you love. I know that the more I know Him the more I fall in love with Him.  I don't want to know the Bible - I want to know the Triune God, the 3 in 1 God, the Bible reveals. The relational God that said:

" Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness"Genesis 1:26

The God that wanted relationship with Us. The God that came down to Us. Immanuel - God with Us.

He asks me to enter into a divine invitation.  I have no idea what that will look like. Will I show up?

Will you?

Because HE IS the I AM, i am
your mutating missionary
with Ebenezer